"Ange aux ailes d'azur, ne te verrai-je plus ? N'est-il plus d'autre espoir qu'une mort sans réveil ? The life of the soldiers appears to be almost as dismal as that of the prisoners. They never move beyond the stipulated precincts, and are, in fact, as closely confined as the criminals under their charge. One naturally asks how they contrive to keep up the supply of the necessaries of life, seeing that no intercourse whatever is allowed with the world below. It is done in this way; there is a sort of slide, or duct, built down the side of the rock, by which baskets are lowered and raised, and provisions conveyed to the castle through a window. One's head gets giddy in gazing at the tremendous descent. It is a fearful piece of work, this lowering and drawing up of baskets, and the prisoners are put to do it, under the superintendence of a guard. Of course the men are carefully selected, for it presents a tempting opportunity for a desperate fellow to dash out his brains in fit of madness. As there are no such luxuries as springs at so great a height, huge cisterns, in which they collect the rain water, are made to answer the purpose, and by a strict economy of this precious element, they manage to supply the wants of their eleven hundred inhabitants. But in case of siege or dry weather, we inquired of our gruff military guide, what would be done? "We should filter salt water," he replied, with the imperturbability of a soldier who is never put out of countenance by a difficulty. The number of residents in the town may be estimated at about four hundred. With the exception of six clerks who are attached to the civil service, and three women who act as guides, all these people live by the fisheries. The trade is perilous enough, and is carried on at a cost of labour out of all proportion to its scanty profits; yet it is found to be sufficient for their support in the wretched way in which they are accustomed to live. Where they have made a haul of fish, of which there are all varieties in these waters, they carry their spoils to a certain rendezvous, at a distance of two leagues, where the market-people meet them. The journey to Avranches is thus divided midway between the fishermen and their wholesale customers. These people are in reality as much cut off from the world as if they dwelt in one of the monasteries of La Trappe. There are only certain times when they can approach the shore, and even then the distance between them and all human habitations is too great to admit of a frequent indulgence of such an enjoyment. Indeed, their extreme poverty leaves them no leisure for enjoyments of any kind. The consequence is, that they hold little intercourse with the outer world beyond that which is indispensable to enable them to carry on their business. Their lives are literally passed on the waters, the sands, and the rock. Men are born and die here who see no more of this green earth. Children are brought up here in boats and nets, and from the cradle to the grave have no further knowledge of the uses of language, the culture of their powers, or the habitudes of the social state than is barely necessary to feed their animal wants. To labour and die are the sole ends for which they are born. Yet they seem to live with an abundant contentment in their own way, so miraculously does nature adapt us to the exigency of circumstances. Such of the women as remain within-doors to attend to domestic duties, are as happy as birds; and you may hear them chattering and singing all day long as they watch their rude cradles, rocked by any contrivances that will spare their hands, which are usually busily employed in mending nets, or patching the rent garments of the absent fishermen. All sorts of resources are brought to bear for keeping up the animal economy on this rock. Some of the old dungeons scooped in the naked stone, are let out for various uses; one of them has been converted into a tolerably commodious magazin de hois. The houses are dark and shallow, scaling the sides of the precipice, and presenting a repulsive and forlorn appearance; yet the inmates, to do them justice, throw off as much as they can of this air of misery, by establishing little scraps of flowerbeds here and there, and planting roses which climb prettily up rickety trellises in spots where we should look for anything else in nature rather than the grace of flowers. XV. THE BRIDGE OF PONTORSON. ABOUT five leagues, or so, from Avranches, on the road to St. Malo, we reached the frontier of Brittany-the Armorica of the ancients. The difference of aspect at this point between the two provinces is quite as sudden, and almost as remarkable, as one feels in ascending out of the sunny plains of Italy into the wintry track of the Simplon. But we must linger a few moments on the tattered bridge of Pontorson-the last Norman village, before we take leave of the luxuriant districts through which our course has hitherto lain. This Portorson consists of a mysterious heap of huts, half-buried in a bed of drifting sands. It is built at the embouchure of a river called the Couësnon, and occupies the point of the most inland creek of the bay of Mont St. Michel. The bridge over this river marks the boundary between the two provinces. Sometimes in the winter the river overflows the surrounding swamps and flats, reducing the inhabitants to a state of domestic existence analogous to that of Holland, as depicted by Butler: "A country that draws fifty foot of water, In which men live as in the hold of nature." Of Pontorson it may be said with equal propriety, that it is It was once a place of strength, and had a château hung round with threatening battlements, which shook the thunders of war from their fiery heights; but at present it more nearly resembles a nest of marauders, who had seized upon a bleak and untenantable spot on the coast, where they might carry on their maritime speculations without much risk of interference. It is like the wreck of a marine village, made up of little, dark, smoke-dried dens, leaning against fragments of old walls, and shouldering each other as if they were drunk, the doorways choked with sand; the windows were black recesses amongst stones and rubbish, and the roofs of loose shingles, particles of which are momentarily lifted by the wind and whirled into your face, making a sensible variety in the hurricane of small gritty powder which prevails in these latitudes. The vestiges of antiquity which were formerly to be seen here are now either destroyed or blotted out by the sands and the hovels. Nothing remains but the dilapidated ruins of the old church, which was built by the father of William the Conqueror, but which has been so patched in subsequent times that the body is the only relique of the whole which seems to belong to that early period. There is not a single memorial left of the history of Pontorson except this church and the indestructible river, into which the luckless ladies of the wife of Du Guesclin were thrown in sacks, for plotting the escape of the Englishman, Felton, from the château, in the 14th century. The river still flows, but the château is gone, and we are forced to fill up the hole in the ballad as well as we can by the help of imagination. A long gaze back into Normandy from the crest of this beggarly bridge sets one involuntarily thinking about the traditions and characteristics of the race whose picturesque valleys we are now about to quit for the stony plains of Brittany. Of all the varieties which enter into the composite of modern France, the Normans are most akin to us in habits and feelings. There is reason for this in the intercourse, friendly and hostile, which for ages past was maintained between the two races. The Normans sent us a line of kings, with trains of followers, whose leaders established themselves in all parts of the kingdom, mixing their blood, names, and usages with our Anglo-Saxon population. We, in return, from time to time overran their province, besieged their chief cities, held possession of the Seine and its forts, made pacts and intermarriages with them, and blended the two races on their soil, as they had already blended them on our own. The English of those days probably caught something of the French gaiety from the Normans, and the Normans acquired increased gravity and steadiness of purpose from the English. Perhaps the finest race of men in the world was that which, living close to the time of transition, directly inherited this happy combination; and the finest stocks by which they have been succeeded are those to whom it has descended in different proportions-the Norman and the Englishman of to-day. The seriousness of the Norman is the characteristic which distinguished him from all other Frenchmen. It is not to be traced exclusively to their early subjection by the Saxons. They are more serious than the Saxons themselves, with a reserve of vivacity which helps to set off their superabundant earnestness. The history of Normandy exhibits a succession of calamities and humiliations, which sufficiently explains how it was that the people grew into this habit of gravity. The Saxons first, then the Romans, then the Saxons again, swarmed into this country, and held it by the sword. Here were elements of gravity enough to supply a national temperament for a thousand years. Then came the Franks, and then the English, to shut out more of their sunshine, so that the Normans, through whatever changes we regard them, have invariably had to do with the most saturnine and hard-headed of conquerors and rulers. For centuries they never enjoyed a single interval of repose; it was a sanguinary struggle from the beginning to the end. Their most prosperous cities were sacked and demolished; they had to contest their pastures inch by inch; they were hunted like stags over their own domains. This was not a way of life likely to gene rate light hearts and sprightly tempers. Nor did the conquest of England contribute to spiritualize them: it only gave them a zest for plunder and aggrandizement, and cast a fierce, rather than a lively glow over their character. The invasion of Normandy by the English made the matter worse. The reverses they suffered during these roving campaigns completely broke them down, and rendered them sullen and distrustful. All these incidents of their history must be added together, to explain the French anomaly of Norman gravity. The wonder is that they did not become morose and depraved. And out of this succession of crushing events sprang other peculiarities, for which the Normans are noted - their reserve and their litigiousness. It is next to an impossibility to prevail upon a Norman to give you a promise. He will never undertake positively to do anything; he will never directly commit himself; there will always be an escape through some evasion in the expression, or some safe condition. Yes and no are not in his vocabulary. We see in this clearly enough that habitual caution which is the offspring of wrongs and deceptions. The Norman has dealt too much with people who have taken dishonest advantage of his pledges, or broken their own, not to speak guardedly, and, as it were, under protest, even on the smallest occasion. As to his litigiousness, that, too, is the fruit of oppression and violence. No man is so fond of a law-suit as your Norman. The experience of so much robbery by the sword left him no appeal but to civil tribunal. The law was his last resource, and his only protection; and the habit outlived the necessity. Besides, in a country where property has so often changed hands under the shadow of aggressive flags, all notions of rights in the soil become confused and obscure. Hence grew endless occasions of litigation, false claims, with strong hands to enforce them, and legacies of lawsuits left to be scrambled for by one generation after another, who naturally inherit, with the grounds of dispute, the passion for gambling over the spoils. With their cousin-Germans, the Normans are a studious people. Their earnestness is not a mere affair of constitution; it is the outward sign of a thoughtful and inquiring habit of mind. They are devotedly fond of reading; and avail themselves with avidity of all possible opportunities of poring over every volume they can put their hands upon. The stranger in Caen or Rouen will discover this ruling passion as he saunters along the streets, if he will take the trouble to peep into the shops. Wherever the tradespeople happen for a moment to be relieved from their business, he will find them engaged in a book of some sort; and this resource is common to all ages and to both sexes. Even little boys, of eleven or twelve, may be seen perched upon high stools, with their elbows planted firmly on the counters, and their eyes buried in an old tome-perhaps, for all we know, the Roman de Rou! XVI.-ROUTE TO ST. MALO. CLEARING the Norman hills, and leaving their rich woods behind us, we now get down amongst the Breton farmers, who grow tobacco and beet-root, and depend chiefly upon apples, and such crops as they can cultivate in their orchards. These farms are industriously tended, yet they have a ragged air, arising from the vicissitudes to which their situation exposes them. Midway between Pontorson and St. Malo there rises up out of the marshes a conical mountain, upon the top of which stands a church, surmounted by a telegraph. This is Mont Dol, famous only for being the central point of the operations of the local administration, to whose guardianship the dykes of this neighbourhood are confided. Extending for a considerable sweep round this place, the properties of the farmers are enclosed and protected by a network of dykes and flood-gates; yet notwithstanding all these precautions, the whole district is inundated in the winter, and Mont Dol, like Mont St. Michel, is literally cut off from the mainland, and converted into an island. Such farms as have been drained and redeemed are said to be exceedingly fertile, and the land is particularly luxuriant in a species of reed, which grows here without culture, and gives to the fields the appearance of sugar plantations. These reeds are extensively used by the people in covering their houses. The tourist must put all his travelling philosophy in requisition to enable him to bear up against the local phenomena of this region-floods in winter and dust in summer. Mont Dol is the antithesis of Venice, seeing that in Venice there is no dust, and that here in the fine weather there is nothing else. If you have been able to preserve your eyesight through these clouds of whirling sand, a glance at the streets of Mont Dol will compensate you for the inconveniences you have suffered. It is a perfect specimen of an old Breton town. The streets are so narrow, that the projecting arches and quaint arcades, whose pillars and cornices embroider the fronts of the houses, hardly admit the passage of a carriage; and as if the dense population of the place had resolved to increase the difficulty as much as possible, they live out in the open air, squatted upon chairs, not only at their doorways, but in the middle of the causeway, or guttered into groups, like noisy urchins, in loud squabble or riotous play. The little lattice-windows, the black tracery on the façades, the odd, picturesque style of the buildings, the middle-age air of darkness that hangs over the town, and the hustling of people in strange, old-world costumes, furnish the incidents of a picture which carries you back into the mists of many hundred years. The suggestion is greatly assisted, too, by a certain cramped and drawn expression in the faces of the inhabitants, generated partly by poverty and unwholesome food, and partly by the unhealthy atmosphere in which they live. I am afraid it must be confessed, that in the matter of beauty, the swart, hard-featured Bretons must not be compared with their clearfaced, handsome neighbours. In the towns you see them at the worst. Sometimes in the open country one's opinion is a little shaken; but the pastoral accessories by which they are here surrounded help to make out an ideal, not always improved by too close an inspection. As you drive along the roads, charming faces start up in the corn-fields, where crowds of women are employed in reaping. Their attitudes, as they suspend the action of their arms to gaze after the carriage, are exceedingly striking. These reapers use a small hand-scythe, which, sometimes thrown up in the air, and sometimes struck down to the ground, while they rest from their labour, with their bright, streaming heads looking out earnestly over the cornflowers, have a very animated effect. The corn in many places is grown in the orchards, under the shadows of which we saw several tableaux of this description, realizing the most exquisite conceptions |